IN THE last half of the nineteenth century, railroads pushed across the deserts and mountains of western America to connect the Atlantic states and the Mississippi Valley with the Pacific seaboard. The builders not only hoped for returns from transcontinental passenger and freight traffic and from the sale of public lands granted to the railroads, but also to open a new channel for oriental trade. In place of the all-sea routes by which the commerce of the Far East with the eastern United States and Europe had hitherto moved, the railroads offered many advantages for passengers and express freight. To function smoothly and profitably, co-operation throughout the route was necessary, and therefore the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads early sought to gain control of some regular line of trans-Pacific communication. It was for the furtherance of this plan that the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company was founded and developed. Commerce had been carried on across the Pacific since the latter half of the sixteenth century, although increased activity and diversity came with the growth of population on the Pacific coast of the United States after the middle of the nineteenth century. Plans were afoot for a regular line of steamers in the trans-Pacific trade as early as i848, although such a service was not actually inaugurated until 1867. The initiator of this line was the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, a powerful American corporation which had been engaged in transportation between Panama and the North Pacific
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Nov 15, 1944
Morris S Rosenthal 
